Asus unveils photography-focused ZenFone 4 series

Asus has unveiled its ZenFone 4 lineup, revealing a series of six devices focused on photography — a key selling point of the Asus ZenFone 3 devices, as well.

The headlining devices of the series, the Asus ZenFone 4 and ZenFone 4 Pro (which seemingly takes over from last year’s ‘Zoom’), feature 5.5-inch 1080p displays, with the Pro carrying an AMOLED screen.

The ZenFone 4 is powered by a Snapdragon 660 chip, between 4 and 6GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage and a 3,300mAh battery — which, with a 600 series processor, should provide healthy battery life like its predecessor. It is priced at $399 USD.

Meanwhile, the ZenFone 4 Pro has a Snapdragon 835 chipset, 6GB of RAM, up to 128GB of internal storage and a 3,600mAh battery. It comes in at $599 USD.

As for the photography setup, the ZenFone 4 carries dual cameras. The first camera features Sony’s IMX362 sensor with 1.4-micron pixels, OIS and a f/1.8 lens. The secondary camera lets you take 120-degree wide-angle shots.

In the ZenFone 4 Pro, the main camera gets a f/1.7 aperture and the secondary camera allows for 2x optical zoom.

Both phones come with Android 7.1.1 out of the box.

There’s also the Selfie series, the $279 USD ZenFone 4 Selfie (shown below) and $379 USD Asus ZenFone 4 Selfie Pro. The Pro version’s dual front-facing camera features a 12-megapixel IMX362 sensor, f/1.8 lens, along with a secondary wide-angle camera lens and an accompanying LED flash. The standard Selfie has a dual front-facing camera setup with a 20-megapixel sensor.

Then there’s the Asus ZenFone 4 Max, which arrived in Russia a few months ago and stocks a 5,000mAh battery as its most interesting feature. The ZenFone 4 Max Pro also has a massive power cell, along with other internal upgrades, and it stocks a dual rear camera setup.

It’s as yet unclear which of these devices will arrive in Canada or at what pricing.

Asus have way too much bloatware, clean up the OS and the devices would do better performance wise

ChrisPollard77

I wish more OEMs would take a page from OnePlus’s OxygenOS … mostly stock, with some useful extras. It just stays out of the way.

The 4 Pro has decent specs, but with all things camera-related in phones, it’s going to really come down to the processing. Sensors are one thing, what the software can do with it is another. Look at the change software made with 4K video stabilization on the OnePlus 5 recently. Sensors matter for capture, but it’s what the software does with what it gets that matters.

For a smaller player in the phone space though, maybe they should focus on fewer SKUs and make each one better. Just a thought.